In Austria, people leave kringle pastries on the counter overnight “for the spirits.” Then they sneak into neighboring houses to eat each others’ kringle. In the morning, if all your kringle is gone, it proves you’re really popular.
In Great Britain, Halloween is called Mischief Night. Children steal doors off hinges and carry them away. Once they stole the Tower of London and threw it in the pond behind the Queen’s country home in Sandringham.
Many people in Hong Kong  believe ancestral spirits roam the world on this day. To appease the spirits, they burn paper money. Their spouses frantically try to put out the flames.
Young trick-or-treaters in Canada are given six-packs of Molson’s.
Ghosts from rival families in Sicily appear overnight and attempt to murder each other – again.
People in Mexico fire pistols into the air and try to be somewhere else when the bullets land.

Q. What kind of fun new candy is available this year to give trick-or-treaters?
A. Candy? Those spoiled brats don’t deserve candy. When I was young and we went door to door, people gave us rocks. Rocks! They weren’t chocolate-covered rocks, either. You were lucky if they had a little dirt or mud on them. Go out in the yard and collect rocks. Don’t buy store candy. It’s a ripoff.
Q. Can you suggest some cute costumes I could sew for my preschoolers?
A. You don’t need to sew anything. Make them wear dirty old clothes, and then get a piece of coal and blacken their faces. They can go as coal miners.
Q. Do you have the recipe for those gelatin “eyeballs” to float in a punchbowl at my party?
A. Don’t fart around with recipes. Go to the butcher shop and ask the butcher for a bunch of fish heads. You’ll get more eyeballs than you can shake a stick at. They won’t cost you anything, either. 
Q. What should I teach my kids about pumpkin-carving safety? 
A. Safety, schmafety. Give ’em a big carving knife and let ’em figure it out for themselves.

--Instead of candy, give out healthy snacks like apples, whole walnuts, small boxes of raisins, single-serve cereals, and baby carrots.
--Dress like Sesame Street’s Big Bird. Make kids count “1-2-3” out loud as you hand them treats. Within minutes, you’ll notice kids crossing the street to avoid your place.
--Use a fog machine to obscure your house from the road.
--Make children sing a cute song to earn their treat – for instance, the aria “O mio babbino caro” from Puccini’s opera Gianni Schicchi. By now they’ll be writing chalk messages on the sidewalk warning friends to steer clear of your place.
--Just happen to begin building a moat around your house that day.
--Leave the lawn sprinkler running.
--Prop stereo speakers in your  window, but instead of a scary soundtrack, play your old Lawrence Welk albums. And-a-one, and-a-two…
--Remove the button from the doorbell so they’re pressing a live wire instead. Hey, it’s only 24 volts.
--Hang out Christmas lights and scatter fake snow. This might confuse the dumb kids. In some neighborhoods, that’s more than half the kids.

--The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outsources all inquiries about disease outbreaks to Walgreens.
--Factory farms will no longer receive subsidies for not growing quinoa.
--Environmental engineers for the Department of Defense must stop doing whatever the heck they usually do.
--With the closing of the National Park Service, Smokey Bear is deprived of his daily ration of Purina Bear Chow and must forage for nuts and berries.
--The Food and Drug Administration is unable to investigate questionable claims of “wrinkle-fighting” moisturizers.
--The Department of Labor shuts down completely, and women scheduled to give birth will just have to wait.
--NASA turns over all operations of orbiting spacecraft to its genius computer, HAL.
--At the Smithsonian’s museums, dinosaur skeletons will no longer be fed, and eventually the creatures may become extinct for the second time.
--The Department of Energy switches to kerosene and potbellied stoves.
--Travelers waiting for passports to be processed will decide to visit Cleveland instead.

Tie several cobs together and hang them on your front door to ward off evil spirits.

Drop a dozen cobs in three quarts of boiling water. Cook for one hour. Taste. Discard.

Hang a cob from your rear-view mirror. It will absorb odors without making your car smell gross the way those cardboard pine trees do.

Gnaw on a cob to curb your urge to snack between meals. 

Hold up several cobs, proclaim “We call it maize,” and laugh maniacally.

Scrape off kernels, grind between two stones, mix with water, spread on your face, and lie in the sun for an hour. Mask will harden; chip off with chisel. You’ll be amazed at the difference in your complexion. 

The next time you’re challenged to a duel, make corncobs your weapon of choice.

Whittle corncob pipes; rent a booth to sell them at a craft fair; and sit there for the weekend while everyone avoids making eye contact with you.

After the first snowfall, scatter kernels outdoors to attract rats and mice.